Eating Psychology & Mind Body Nutrition Articles

One of the most fundamental building blocks of nutritional metabolism is neither vitamin, mineral, nor molecule. It’s our relationship with food. It’s the sum total of our innermost thoughts and feelings about what we eat.

If you have ever wondered about the power of thought to influence nutritional and calorie burning metabolism, here’s a story you won’t want to miss. It’s about two clients who provided me with one of the big “aha’s” of my professional career. Early on in my nutritionist practice, a forty-eight-year-old female lawyer named Toni was referred to me by a local physician in New York City. He warned me that she was a difficult patient who was trying to lose weight but couldn’t. The doctor did numerous tests but found nothing wrong with Toni; he had suggested various diets and she hadn’t lost a single pound. The highlight of this case was that Toni was a marathon runner. She ate a paltry 1,300 calories per day, she ran eight to ten miles a day during the work week and about fifteen miles on Saturday, and she was a legitimate candidate for losing fifteen pounds.

I find that whenever I read about weight loss in the popular media or watch people on reality TV trying to fight off the pounds, or listen to the latest strategies from the experts – be it a drug, diet, or the promise of some genetic breakthrough – I’m left feeling empty, used and uninspired.

I love the term “brain food.” It seems pretty well recognized in the mainstream and has a natural way of rolling off the tongue. We can all likely agree that feeding the brain some good food is a smart nutritional strategy. Of all the organs that could possibly go south on us, the brain ranks pretty high in terms of one we’d want to nurture and protect. Actually, I can’t think of another organ that we put the word “food” after. Few people talk about kidney food, spleen food, liver food, or intestine food. To this end, nutrition experts and enthusiasts wisely point out the virtues of brain foods such as: fish, walnuts, blueberries, eggs, lecithin, coffee; herbs such as ginkgo, and a long list of supplements and amino acids that have passed the test of modern clinical use for brain health. Who doesn’t want to improve memory, cognition, mental acuity, and brain plasticity?

If you’re alive, then chances are you’ve craved. Maybe the craving was for some sugar, or chocolate, perhaps pancakes and syrup, bacon, pizza; maybe you had a late night craving for something obnoxiously loud and crunchy, or sinfully cold and creamy.

Sometimes I say to myself that if I hear one more thing about losing weight I’m going to quit my job, run away to some tropical island, and eat vacation food for the rest of my life. But then I remember that one of the most important commitments of my life is to be the best expert and teacher and practitioner when it comes to eating psychology - which means I’ll probably be hearing about all the latest weight loss information until everyone on earth is finally skinny.

Have you ever wondered why so many of our esteemed nutrition experts are constantly contradicting each other and offering us highly conflicting views of what we should and shouldn't eat? Wouldn’t it be great if we could have a clearer, big picture view of things that would empower us more as eaters? Well, I'd love to share with you some nutritional insights that I believe can have a life changing impact on the way we understand diet and nutrition. I call these insights The 3 Levels of Diet. This is a powerful set of distinctions that can forever change the way you navigate the food universe, and even have a direct effect on your health and metabolism.

Vitamin P – Pleasure – is a vital element that makes our meals nutritionally complete and makes life worth living. Like all organisms on the planet, we humans are genetically programmed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. A cat chasing a mouse is seeking pleasure, while the unfortunate rodent is doing its best to avoid pain. Indeed, any behavior we can imagine can be seen as either of these, or a swirl of both. This is particularly apparent in light of our eating. When we eat, we’re seeking the pleasure of food and avoiding the pain of hunger. Indeed, destiny has fashioned for us a body that’s wired for joy.
The simple scientific equation for the profound biochemical effects of pleasure is this:

There’s more to chewing than you might think. It’s arguably the first digestive activity that we bring to a meal, and unlike the chemical processes that occur in our gut, chewing falls under our conscious control. Except of course, when we go a bit unconscious and inhale our food. But chewing is more than a digestive aid. It also has a potent psychological function that helps keep body, mind and emotions in balance.

Rhythm is everywhere. Each particle of our being moves and pulsates, dances and sings, and keeps to the beat of a brilliantly conceived symphony. The whole of our biology is a fantastic clockwork of precise chemical and hormonal rhythms whose timing is critical for our survival and well-being.

Here's some good news. If you're a health coach, nutritionist, dietitian, parent, or any food enthusiast who wants to have others eat precisely what you want them to eat, I think I can tell you how to do it. Of course, we’re doing this for a very good reason - a lot of us are smart enough to know the best ways for people to feed themselves.

Did you know that heart disease claims the lives of men and women more than any other disease, and is even more deadly than all forms of cancer combined?
The simple truth is that our hearts need some help. And that’s likely why you’ll hear many of the leading natural healing experts recommend preventive remedies for heart disease such as: garlic, omega-3 fatty acids, Vitamin D, magnesium, hawthorne berry, C0-Enzyme Q10, fiber and many more. But, in the bigger picture, our approach to stopping heart disease, before it ever starts, isn’t working very well. That’s why I think it’s time for some new superfoods just for the heart! These may be a bit unexpected, but if you put your nutritional thinking cap on and give some of these a try, my heartfelt belief is that you’ll notice a big difference.
As always, please let me know what you think:

It seems that “the last 5 pounds” has become far more famous and noteworthy than “The Last Supper.” We approach this final frontier of fat-loss with a religious fervor that would make any good preacher jealous. As a teacher and practitioner in the fields of nutrition and eating psychology, I've noticed that these last 5 pounds carry a lot of weight, so to speak. They have so much power.

Many people use the word metabolism, but few know what it actually means. Indeed, if you asked a room filled with a hundred doctors and nutritionists, “What’s the definition of metabolism?” you’d likely hear a hundred different answers to the topic metabolism definition. It’s no surprise, then, that the rest of us would be confused about this topic. So in the spirit of furthering science and making nutrition and health a lot more interesting, let’s take a look at the old definition of metabolism, and come up with a newer one that’s more crispy and fresh.

If you have an interest in nutrition and enjoy reading up on the latest information and trends, you've likely noticed that there's a certain blueprint for how things work in the field of food and health. Correct me if you see it differently, but most of the articles or books or blogs on this amazing topic focus on one of the following: the latest super-food, the newest supplement, the next toxic food you should stop eating, or the hot breakthrough diet that will help you lose weight. That's pretty much the template for what the field of nutrition looks like for the average consumer of information. And for sure, this formula can certainly titillate some brain cells and keep our curiosity piqued - up to a point.

Have you ever noticed that the field of nutrition can sometimes be a little stale, repetitive and boring? That's why I love the unexpected, especially when it comes to dietary advice. Perhaps one of the most common desires I hear amongst those interested in better nutrition is “how can I have more energy?"

There’s a fundamental paradox in human nature that you may have noticed by now: a part of us wants inner peace, and another part of us actively fights against it. We want to eat right, but we also want to break all the food rules. We want love, but we love to look for it in all the wrong places.

One of the most unusual scientific revelations of the last century is the mathematical proof that the act of observing any phenomenon in the universe - be it the flight of a bird of the rotation of the planet - has a direct influence upon that phenomenon. According to the laws of physics, we have no choice but to alter the bird’s course or the planet’s speed simply by focusing our awareness on it. So if we have the power to tweak the orbit of a heavenly body, it should come as no surprise that vitamin A – Awareness - also has a profound impact on the human body.

If you’re a human being alive on planet Earth, chances are, you’ve got habits. Some of those habits we like, while some of our habits nag us because they don’t serve a healthy purpose yet they don’t easily fall away. As Mark Twain famously said about habits, “quitting smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.” Indeed there’s a huge industry built upon helping the helpless defeat their overeating habits, sugar habits, poor exercise habits, smoking habits and more. But what exactly is a habit anyways? Where do they come from, why are they here, and is there a simple approach to our habits that can better enlighten and empower us? I’ve got some ideas about all this – it’s a habit of mine to try to figure this sort of thing out – so tell me what you think:

I’m not sure of the number of perfectionists who walk among us, but if you work in the nutrition, fitness, or eating psychology business, it seems like perfectionism is everywhere. So many people are looking for the perfect body, perfect weight, perfect diet, the perfect nutritional system, and more. It seems like such a noble and high-level approach to life – just do everything flawlessly and we’ll have achieved a lofty place in the Hall of Fame of Life. Some will applaud us, others will envy us, and of course, we’ll have the inner satisfaction of having reached the supreme state of perfectness. But, as fate would have it, our quest for precision has a toxic side to it that can be quite debilitating. It can terrorize us, set us up for constant failure, and keep us in a perpetual state of never feeling good enough about who we are, how we eat, and what we look like. So, what’s up with perfectionism? Where does it come from? Why do we have it? And how can we prevent it from wreaking havoc on our very human and imperfect selves?
I think I have a few answers...

When I wrote my first book, Nourishing Wisdom, I wanted to create a whole new approach to nutrition that was fresh, real and meaningful. I was committed to discovering a way to talk about food and nourishment that honors the timeless wisdom in these topics. Like so many people, I was bored with the quick fix, sensationalist approaches to health and weight loss that populate the nutrition field, and keep the conversation in a stuck and outdated place. About 24 years later, the book is still in print, has been translated into 7 languages, and is considered a timeless classic. It’s a great lesson to have faith that messages from the heart are as important, if not more so, than those that issue forth from the head.

I feel very fortunate that for over 20 years now, I have spent much of my professional life training professionals. It’s the work that’s near and dear to my heart, and I’m aware of what a great honor it is. From a young age, I’ve always admired my teachers.

One of the lesser understood but clinically useful nutrition strategies when it comes to weight, energy, mood and appetite regulation is the little known field of bio-circadian nutrition. Simply put, when we eat is often as important as what we eat.

Have you ever heard a story that inspired you or changed your life? One that lifted your spirits or gave you hope? The stories that move us are like powerful drugs that ignite our metabolism. There’s a hidden narrator within each of us that puts a spin on every aspect of our journey. And that spin - whether it’s positive and life affirming or negative and nihilistic - sets our metabolism in motion and creates a biochemistry to mirror our inner world. As we become more adept at discerning the secret stories we unwittingly tell ourselves, and the more willing we are to author a generous and healing tale, our metabolism rises according to the new standards we set. Let’s take a look at how we can harness the nutritional power of story.

Chances are if you could figure out a way to help people truly control their appetites you would likely be awarded sainthood, along with a really nice big retirement fund. I must admit, I'm fascinated by how we relate with this thing called “my appetite.”